A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage • Hacker News Board

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#491

Post by undersuit » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 11:16 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #486

chadzawistowski wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at this chart http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user9218...

Do you have the source for this, because it looks suspicious as heck. It has someone making nominally $20,000 receiving $43,000 from the state in assistance. Is it due to a "you are living in a city with sky high rents" adjustment?

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Eri...

It's amazing what you can do by typing in the name of a graph on Google. I guess that's why my school teachers marked down my score if I forgot to label my graphs.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#492

Post by jeffdavis » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 12:06 AM UTC

st3v3r wrote: post #485

jeffdavis wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A healthy career is a journey that often begins long before you depend on the money. A first job is more than just "gas money".

Not a response to my question at all.

Your question was heavily loaded, and misses the time dimension. Today's unemployed HS student might be tomorrow's un(der)-employed head of household. So don't dismiss it as "gas money".

Trying to create a total order by comparing the two alternatives goes down a bad road. There's always someone in need, but if you try to optimize the entire economy around that one story, you will have a disaster.

Maybe it's best to just have more jobs, period, even with low pay? And then make up for needy cases some other way?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#493

Post by evilgenius134 » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 10:14 AM UTC

chris11 wrote: post #306

esaym wrote: post #203

I'm never quite sure what to think about articles (or ideas) like this. I think of my grandfather who served in the air force for 20 years. When he needed more money, what did he do? He picked up a paper route early in the morning. What did he do when the paper route + air force income still wasn't enough? He started driving a taxi during evening hours. And when those three jobs weren't enough? He opened up a service…

I think there is huge difference between saying someone is personally responsible for their future and saying the only thing preventing the lower class from doing well is laziness. A minimum wage would definitely not be close to a living wage, and a living wage doesn't include saving for retirement or other less basic expenses.The average income in 2015 in the U.S. for people with some college was around $37,000. Tha…

> $37,000

> That is definitely livable in most places, but money would be a little tight.

> Average wage isn't really good

I consider livable to be much under $15,000, probably under $10,000 in most states. I'm not sure how you would spend $37,000 to only consider it livable.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#494

Post by dandermotj » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #279

dandermotj wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose from an individual standpoint examples like yours are very relevant - a big fear for myself is working a job we're I am unfulfilled - but from a broad view we must agree increasing employment is a good goal. The more people working, the greater the output and the cheaper it costs, from which everyone benefits whether we are employed ourselves or not. A highly employed nation is a bountiful one.

Shouldn't our measure be productivity, then, instead of employment? At least as far as what a society should care about? In terms of social benefits, not all employment is equal. We could hire all un-employed people to move rocks back and forth, but that won't contribute to society anything that simply giving those people cash for nothing wouldn't solve just as well. There are two separate goals we are trying to acco…

You're right, that's why we use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as our primary measure of an economy's performance; which employment is the fundamental driver of. I wasn't arguing against basic income, I was just contending that individual circumstance of employment like unhappiness are not good reasons for disregarding the benefits of increasing employment.

I absolutely want to see basic income tried and tested in all its various forms and iterations. I think it could be the solution to the convoluted social benefit policies which are too complicated to be navigated and too specific to generalise well.

And of course I agree that unproductive employment is worthless to society in the long.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#495

Post by rskar » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 11:44 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #489

rskar wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...then Walmart could double their profit now by raising prices. I doubt this. ... >If you assume revenue goes up without an increase in costs, then yes, but there's little reason to assume that. Well, let's review, and please check out my math below. I did some more googling and copy-pasted what I found. (copy-paste:) Revenue is calculated by multiplying the price at which goods or services are sold by the number o…

Your math is off by a factor of the profit margin, unfortunately. 209k is revenue. Profit per employee is that times profit margin, which is around 7k. 6 times that $1750 figure is well above profit. Or just take the 2 million employees they have, multiply by 8 thousand, and get 16 billion, more than their profit.

I concede my math is off. The algebra is good, the arithmetic bad, right at the part I was declaring basis points. They're not bps, they're straight percentage points (making the profit margin reductions off by a factor of 1/100 - d'oh!).

Redoing the math: Walmart, PM = -1.51% (=3.5 - 6 * 0.835); McDonalds, PM = 1.66% (=19 - 6 * 2.89). Clearly not tenable.

For the giggles, I then went I calc'd on price increases (putting aside supply-and-demand considerations) to cover $6/hr increase. PM and Markups came to 3.3% and 5% for Walmart; 16.2% and 17.4% for McDonalds. These are gross overestimations to be sure, since the approach is akin to giving every employee a huge wage boost, but really we need to know what proportion of employees would get the increase to meet some minimum wage level. Study at https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q3/study-raisi... puts it around 4.3% for restaurants.

Anyway, plenty of good opinions on what we might see: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015-12-22/minimum-wage-..., http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic..., http://evans.uw.edu/centers-and-projects/minimum-wage-study.

OK, this horse has been flogged pretty good.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#496

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #492

st3v3r wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a response to my question at all.

Your question was heavily loaded, and misses the time dimension. Today's unemployed HS student might be tomorrow's un(der)-employed head of household. So don't dismiss it as "gas money". Trying to create a total order by comparing the two alternatives goes down a bad road. There's always someone in need, but if you try to optimize the entire economy around that one story, you will have a disaster. Maybe it's best to…

"Maybe it's best to just have more jobs, period, even with low pay? And then make up for needy cases some other way?"

Why should that be anyone's responsibility but the company? Why should my tax dollars be used to subsidize some greedy business guy who can't be arsed to pay their employees enough to live on?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#497

Post by randyrand » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #381

randyrand wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good source. That is of course one valid way to implement it and is essentially BI in calculation. Still even under miltons NIC, an important difference between NIC and BI is intended purpose. BI proponents want enough to live on with little hardship, NIC implies nothing in that regard and most NIC proponents I imagine would be opposed to that. I would not be a proponent of BI for that important 'scalar' reason.

I agree that the main difference between UBI and NIT is framing, and I prefer UBI for that very reason. It's much simpler to understand, and it separates the notion of creating a social baseline from the tax system. Also, this framing could also make a practical difference to the interface. If the benefit is administrated separately, you don't need to think about tax until you get a job. Having to submit a tax return…

> In the longer term, complete sustenance may become trivial.

This can already be done easily with the right mindset. We do not need any more technical advancements to achieve this goal. Water is cheap. Agriculture technology is already amazing. Food can be as little as a few dollars a day if you buy cheap foods (beans, rice, bread, ect). Its possible to live rather well on $300 a month or $3600 a year if you live in the right location, and live within your means. Heck, most of the world already does this.

But the problem to living like this in in america is our wealth drives up the cost of certain inherently supply limited resources. The biggest ones being those resources which are tied to land. And the biggest example being shelter.

Shelter prices are mainly determined by people 'one upping' each other. Competing with each other.

Given these obstacles, the biggest beneficiary of UBI may not be the common person, but land owners.

Building skyscrapers is a great partial solution to the problem, but resistance is everywhere.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#498

Post by joeyespo » Fri, Apr 08, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #227

Gig work that works would be smarter than both. One of the problems with basic income is that decouples work from income entirely. One of the things paid work accomplishes is encouraging certain kinds of human behaviors. From what I have read, every society that ever tried to promise that "we will take care of everyone, regardless of their contribution or behavior" had to reneg on that when it backfired on them. Deco…

Gig work doesn't go away with BI.

> One of the problems with basic income is that decouples work from income entirely

It does, but not entirely. You can still work for extra income. It only breaks the dependency in the other direction. And that's its strength.

The gig economy, while incredible and empowering, is also unstable and largely out of your control. You can have an influx of work at one moment, and near zero another. BI smooths this over by allowing you to survive during the dips. It also reduces the toxic stress contractors can experience even during a wave of work. When the gigs run out (and therefore, the income is less under BI--but not zero!), it gives you time to seek out new work without panicking.